Called by Darkness

by Sean Fletcher

  I wanted it all.

  “Now what will you do?” Kasia said, her gleeful face hovering above me. “How will you—”

  I broke free from her shadows with ease and grabbed her, my hand squeezing her throat until I could feel the walls of her esophagus beneath my fingertips. How easy it would be to snap her neck. To make it so she never moved again. I just needed to squeeze a little harder…

  Do it! The Dark Prince commanded. Show her that my power has no equal!

  My fingers tightened as I drew Kasia closer to me. Her eyes didn’t plead, but bored into mine, as though curious whether I was going to kill her or not.

  I said do it! the Dark Prince snarled.

  No!

  I threw Kasia away, tossing her across the cavern as though she weighed nothing. I screamed as slices of pain raced through my body, the Dark Prince’s anger spreading like fire in my skull. “You little fool! You had her in your grasp!”

  A wave of rage slammed into me. I staggered, feeling myself nearly get pulled away by the sudden surge of power. His strength was intoxicatingly glorious, but I’d experienced it once before. No matter how good it felt, the longer I tempted it, the greater danger I was in.

  I shoved back against him, building a mental wall I could huddle behind, closing off where he’d come from. His waves of rage again and again battered against me. I dropped to one knee as the Prince nearly broke free from what little hold I had on him.

  “You might have given me power,” I bit out as his anger again thrummed through my veins. “But this is my body. I get to control it.”

  I threw up the last of my mental wall, keeping him sealed inside. “And I’ll decide what I do.”

  For now, he answered.

  Kasia was getting to her feet. With a roar, I leapt at her, driving my fist into the shield of magic she barely managed to conjure. My fist split it like tissue paper. Kasia stumbled back, summoning another, but I split that one too before plunging my hand into the ground, cratering it. “Humak!”

  A rift opened beneath us, splintering up the wall and sending chunks of rock raining down on our heads. Quicker than I’d ever moved, I grabbed a falling stalactite and hurled it like a javelin at Kasia. She spun, dancing her fingers across it as it flew past, still smiling.

  She was playing with me. She was enjoying this.

  I aimed another spell at her. “Detna!”

  My ears were suddenly ringing, my eyes dancing with spots of light as the explosion blasted apart half the cavern. When the worst of the attack had subsided, I swayed in place, the sudden release of power temporarily overwhelming me. The wall Kasia had stood in front of was nothing but rubble now. And Kasia herself…

  I scooped up Valkyrie and leapt through the hole I’d created. My legs collapsed as I hit the ground in the next cavern. I forced myself up. I couldn’t be weak. Not now. But beneath the haze of rage and power, I knew my strength was fading, physically and mentally. Despite my wall, the Dark Prince was continuing to press further into my thoughts, and it was taking almost every ounce of my willpower to stave him off.

  I heard clapping. Kasia stood in the center of the cavern, completely unharmed, applauding me like I’d just finished a magnificent performance.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I shouted in a voice that was mine, but tinged with something deeper, something more primal. “Is this what you hoped for?”

  “You are everything I wanted and more,” Kasia said, and I was shocked to hear pride in her voice. “At last, you’ve welcomed and controlled what any lesser being would have succumbed to!”

  “I haven’t—” I gasped as the Dark Prince pressed harder against my mind. I forced myself to focus on Kasia, only on her. On her smug smile. On her triumphant attitude. She acted like she was always in control. Like this was all part of some plan I couldn’t even begin to guess.

  “What do you care?” I forced out. “Why does this matter to you so much?”

  “It is everything to me, Skylar. You are my trump card, my greatest success. After all,” her smile grew the widest yet, splitting into an expression of pure joy. “I was the one who put the Dark Prince inside you.”

  I reeled, briefly overcome with shock. She had to be lying. There was no way, no chance… “That’s…that’s not possible.”

  Kasia took a step closer. “Consider yourself lucky! All those ambitions and you actually have the power to make them come true. You should be thanking me.”

  “Thanking you? Thanking you?”

  “I don’t expect you to see now, but you will. What I did will give you everything you want. And in turn you’ll give me the same.”

  “Liar!”

  I thrust my arms up, my power cascading like an avalanche rushing down to crush her.

  Kasia raised her fingers and snapped. I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye, a brief glimpse of fur and teeth right before the manticore slammed into me.

  Its scorpion tail plunged down, narrowly missing my chest. One claw cut into my leg. Warm blood sprayed across the stone. I screamed before plunging Valkyrie into its hide and tearing open a wide gash.

  We smashed into the ground and were thrown apart. I staggered as I picked myself up. Cold air scraped the inside of my throat. My pulse throbbed in my head, but I could tell the beast was weak, probably from the last fight. I could sense it. I could smell it. Death. Its death. I was no longer the scared, frozen girl from before. I was as dangerous as it was. Maybe more so.

  The manticore began circling me, probing for a weak spot. I forced magic into the wound in my leg until it went numb. This was no time for weakness. Even with my power, I couldn’t afford to slip up.

  I leveled my sword at it.

  “Here, kitty kitty…”

  It flared its wings and jetted forward. I pulsed magic into my arms, stepping aside at the last moment and bringing Valkyrie down hard on its tail. The blade cut through its flesh easily; the manticore’s roars turned violent. It thrashed around, desperately trying to catch me, but I was too fast, I was beyond it now. It was angry, but I was rage incarnate, blood and dark magic pumping through my veins.

  I threw Valkyrie aside and attacked with my fists, relishing the feeling of the skin of my knuckles splitting as I punched, drinking in the manticore’s ever-weakening cries of pain.

  I cracked another blow across its snout and it went down. I followed, not letting up. Its poisoned blood seared my skin but I continued pummeling it, even after it shuddered and lay still, pummeled it until the still-sane part of my mind screamed at me to stop and my blows ceased.

  I kneeled atop the manticore’s warm body, staring at my bloody hands.

  Look, the Dark Prince said. Look at what we’ve accomplished. A feat few could ever hope to match. We’re unstoppable!

  “We’re murderers,” I whispered. Horror at what I’d done began to fill me. Not horror that I’d killed in self-defense, but that I’d done so mindlessly, my only thought on bloodlust and not the life I’d just snuffed out. “This is wrong.”

  This is the way things are. There is only power and those strong enough to seek it. You need me. You need this strength!

  “Not this. Not like this.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. It took every bit of my remaining strength to shove the dark magic away, bottling it up back to that deep place inside me. For once, the Dark Prince didn’t resist.

  You’ll need me again, he said right before the last of the darkness relinquished its grip on me. And I’ll be waiting.

  When the last of the magic faded so did my strength. I collapsed off the manticore. I tried to push myself up but a sharp hand jerked my chin up. Kasia’s smiling face leered down at me.

  “This was a good start,” she whispered. “Your spirit’s strong to resist his power, but I will break it. Your loved ones are safe, but you can’t protect them forever.”

  “Watch me,” I managed to spit out.

  “I plan to. You didn’t think I’d let my biggest accomplishment out of sight, did you?
”

  I weakly reached for Valkyrie, lying just out of reach. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—let her get away. “I’m not yours. You don’t own me!”

  “Not yet. But when you’re ready, you’ll come to me. You’ll need me. And I’ll be waiting.”

  “Skylar!”

  Asher came skidding around the manticore, sword raised. “Get your hands off—”

  Kasia gave me one last smile, then black smoke wreathed her body and she vanished.

  “—her.” Asher spun in place, sword up.

  “She’s gone,” I said, more to myself than to him. She was gone, but somehow, without knowing where she was, I felt in more danger than before.

  Asher didn’t lower his sword. “We can’t stay here. The rest of the Masters are with Lucie—Skylar!”

  He barely caught me as I collapsed again, all the strength draining out of my body as though a drain plug had been pulled. Like I’d guessed, I was paying for the fight. My muscles felt like useless strings of taffy. Thinking seriously hurt.

  Asher sheathed his sword and easily lifted me up. I let him without protest, more grateful than I could say that he was here.

  “You came back for me,” I said.

  He looked down at me as he carried me out of the cavern. “I told you, anywhere and always, remember?”

  I smiled faintly. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  I got one a last look at the dead manticore before we left, but I didn’t feel any sense of victory. We might have won today, but I knew the battle had just begun.

  Chapter Twenty

  I was getting pretty sick of the medical wing. No pun intended.

  “Just a bit,” I begged.

  “No.”

  “A millisecond. A yoctosecond. That’s, like…like…not long at all.”

  “I said no, Miss Rivest!”

  “But—”

  Mrs. Rochester held up the bottle of Acceler-growth juice she’d been practically force-feeding me since I’d returned to the Academy the day before. I didn’t care if it helped me heal; it tasted like pond scum mixed with rat droppings and was the kind of chunky that only came with long-expired milk.

  “Would you like another dose?” Mrs. Rochester threatened.

  I settled back in bed with a huff.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said triumphantly. “I told you, Miss Marquee and Mr. Keller are both fine. You can see them tomorrow when I’ve cleared you.”

  Tomorrow wasn’t good enough. I was healed. I was cured. I was tired of sitting around here with nothing to do and I wanted to see my friends.

  So…

  I waited until Mrs. Rochester had gone to check on Coach Newman (all the Masters had only been a little hurt, but Coach Newman was really playing it up) and slipped out of bed. With a flick of my hands I closed the curtains behind me and slipped outside and down the hall to the ward Mia and Colson were staying in.

  A healing nymph shot me a curious look as I entered. I gave her a nervous wave, then spotted Mia. She and Colson had pushed their beds together, a chess board laid out between them. Mia was frowning at the board, a cluster of her lost pieces on Colson’s side. I was only a little jealous seeing them together. Asher had come by once, when I was half groggy from Mrs. Rochester’s initial healing spell. And he hadn’t kicked my butt in chess.

  Mia looked up as I walked over. Her eyes grew so wide they threatened to take over her entire face.

  “Skylar!”

  The board nearly toppled over as she dove out of bed to hug me, squeezing me tight enough to bruise a rib or two. “I wanted to see you so, so badly but Mrs. Rochester said I couldn’t!”

  “Glad you’re doing okay,” Colson rumbled.

  “You mean, ‘glad you’re alive,’” I said.

  He nodded, a small smile on his lips.

  Mia sat me down on the bed and demanded I tell her absolutely everything that happened and don’t-I-dare-leave-out-a-single-detail. It took me a few tries to get started, but once I got going it was easier. I even managed to lie my way through how I’d come across the manticore, already dead, and how the blood Asher had seen me covered in had been from a wound that wasn’t all that bad. I tried to keep my brief fight with Kasia as vague as possible, telling them that she was already on the run when I’d found her.

  “She’ll be back,” Colson said when I’d finished. “The Academy delivered a couple of her captured acolytes to the Coalition, but give her time to recover and she’ll try again.

  “I just don’t understand why,” I said, exasperated. “What did the Academy ever do to her?”

  Colson’s massive shoulders moved up and down. “She has a beef with your mom. Probably with Lucien, too. So she’ll destroy what’s most important to them.”

  It couldn’t be that simple. Then again, maybe it could. There was bad blood between her and my mom, an old wound that drove Kasia even today. But it didn’t matter. I’d meant what I’d said to Kasia before she’d escaped: she could threaten us all she wanted, she could try to hurt my friends, but I would stop her every time.

  Mia had been quiet during my entire story, slowly bunching her sheets up in her fists.

  “You okay?” I said.

  She sighed. “I just…”

  “I told you to drop it,” Colson said roughly. “She doesn’t care. She doesn’t hate you.”

  “But I attacked you, Skylar!” Mia blurted out. “I attacked all of you!”

  “Packed a pretty big wallup, too,” I joked, pretending to massage my shoulder. But Mia’s eyes watered and I felt awful. “Mia, it wasn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you?”

  Mia gave a small sniffle. Colson pulled one of her hands into his until she stopped fidgeting.

  “You. Were. Possessed.” He said it like they’d already had this conversation a half dozen times before. “You didn’t have control over anything you did.”

  “I just…I don’t remember what I did. It was like…like I wasn’t in my body anymore. Like I was trapped in a dark room with no way out. I wasn’t me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again while a cold chill crept up my body. The Dark Prince had been strangely silent since the last battle, but what Mia had experienced sounded eerily similar to my first encounter with him. Maybe what had happened to her wasn’t permanent. Maybe that meant my curse wasn’t either. The thought made me feel a little lighter.

  “We’re all fine,” I assured Mia. “And of course I don’t hate you!”

  Mia sniffled again. Colson sighed and handed her a box of tissues from beneath his bed.

  “The fact that you fought it as much as you did, that you survived as much as you did, that’s amazing,” I went on.

  “Exactly what I told you,” Colson said.

  Mia slowly nodded. She pulled her eyes up to me, and they weren’t full of tears anymore, but fiercely determined. “Thank you. Both of you. But I won’t let something like that happen again. I’ll become…I’ll become so strong that no one will ever have to worry.”

  I hugged her tight. “You totally will.”

  “That all sounds good, but maybe lay off a little during sparring,” Colson said.

  Mia’s face twisted into a mischievous grin. “I’ll consider it.”

  There were flowers on my bedside table when I snuck back to my ward; a vibrant bouquet the color of the rainbow, stuffed full of trumpet tulips and snap dragons, lilies and even a Venus flytrap.

  I poked my head back through the curtains and scanned the rest of the ward, but I didn’t see anyone who might have left it. I returned to the flowers. There was a tag on it.

  Hope you get out soon

  The dorm is nice and peaceful without you

  But I’m already tired of not getting to whup you in combat class

  Drink lots of Acceler-growth

  Don’t throw up too much

  Asher

  I crumpled the note. That boy…

  But I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Right up until the Venus flytrap turned to
ward me, opened its mouth, and started belting “Dangerous Woman” loud enough to wake the undead below us.

  I stared at it, horrified, for a full five seconds before quickly snapping it off at the stem and smothering the stupid thing beneath my pillow until it went silent.

  Asher…

  I pulled the pillow off and the Venus flytrap spit glitter in my face. A small tag with the words ‘Maybe this will get you moving’ was tied around its stem.

  That boy…

  “I see, and hear, that my son has excellent taste in floral arrangements!”

  I spun around. “Lucien—Headmaster—sir!”

  Lucien was standing at the gap in the curtain. I hurriedly tried brushing glitter from my hair, but only managed to spread it more. The fly trap opened its mouth to start singing again, but I dropped the pillow back on it.

  “You’re up and about earlier than I expected,” Lucien said. “Perhaps out taking a stroll or two?”

  “Oh, ah…I was…just stretching. Here. In my bed. Nowhere else.”

  Lucien put a finger on his smiling lips. “Between you and me, I think Mrs. Rochester can be a little overdramatic when it comes to her patients. Which makes her perfect in a school full of teenagers with magic. May I?” He indicated to the foot of the bed.

  “Oh, yeah, of course.”

  Lucien swept his robes aside and perched himself elegantly on the bed. I quickly brushed off the remainder of the glitter from my spot and sat beside him. I hadn’t seen him since the battle, but he looked more unscathed than any of the other Masters. He also didn’t look mad at me.

  That was good, right?

  “I wanted to apologize,” Lucien said after a short pause.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I underestimated you. I heard what both you and Asher did to save the Masters. You kept your cool under pressure. You put yourselves into harm’s way to help them, and went above and beyond anything we expect of a student here.”

  I waited for the ‘But!’ Surely he’d heard of my little showdown with Kasia. Maybe he thought I’d been trying to make a name for myself again. More than that, what if he knew about what I’d done during my fight with her? I didn’t think anyone, Asher included, had seen the Dark Prince come out, but I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking I’d gotten off scot-free.